


Breathing Like a Drowning Man

by coolbreeze1



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Atlantis, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbreeze1/pseuds/coolbreeze1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brush with danger at home teaches everyone they still have a lot to learn about their new lives on Atlantis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathing Like a Drowning Man

**Author's Note:**

> Set very, very early season 1. Not beta'ed.

* * *

John woke up choking and gagging, sour salty water rushing up the back of his throat. He threw his head back, but the rest of his body lay immobile, pinned to the hard ground by an invisible force.

“Roll him! Roll him!” a voice yelled. “Careful of his neck!”

The invisible forces shifted, twisting the floor away beneath him until he was on his side. Sour liquid filled his mouth, and his stomach bucked.

“It is alright, Major,” another voice said. A woman. Familiar. Sounding desperately sad. “You are alright.”

He choked again, his stomach heaving up more of the vile salty water. He gasped as soon as his mouth cleared, but the inhale of air only made him cough more. He felt the floor moving again, then the faint pressure of hands maneuvering his limbs, pulling his left arm above his head and rolling him until he was laying on that arm, then bending his right knee halfway toward his chest.

“Keep him in this position,” the first voice said. A man. Also familiar, but not as familiar as the woman. “Watch his breathing but don’t let him move until the med team gets here.”

“I understand,” she answered, her voice close to John’s ear.

He heard splashing footsteps, and then the man cursed from somewhere much farther away. John coughed again, spitting brackish water.

“Breathe, Major.”

A hand accompanied the voice, pressing against the side of his head. He peeled open his eyes, and blinked away stinging drops of liquid. He saw another hand laying in front of him, ghostly pale and unmoving, and it wasn’t until the woman grabbed the fingers that he realized it was his own. She bent forward, coppery brown hair falling around her face.

“Major Sheppard?”

 _Teyla,_ his brain supplied. His stomach clenched again, and Teyla tightened her grip on his hand as he threw up more water. Distantly, he heard more pounding footsteps approaching, and then the man from before yelled at them to hurry.

“I’ve got no pulse or breathing from either Sergeant Eckels or Doctor Voros, but that water was ice cold,” he snapped out.

“Med team’s still two minutes out,” someone else answered. John sucked in a ragged breath, feeling his chest rattle. Teyla shifted, still holding his hand but moving enough that John spotted a group of people huddled several feet away. One man was kneeling over an unmoving figure, pumping on his chest, his face a mask of tension.

“Start CPR on Voros,” he yelled out, and it was the first voice John had heard, the one who’d yelled about rolling him and keeping him still. _Bates,_ his brain helpfully supplied, and John remembered that they’d been exploring one of the many uninhabited area of Atlantis. It was a standing mission every Saturday morning, and he, Teyla, Bates, and a handful of others had been up on the rotation for that week.

 _Saturday Morning Cartoon Adventure._ One of the Marines had dubbed it that, and the name had stuck. He sucked in a deep breath, irritating waterlogged lungs, and started coughing again. His hand gripped Teyla’s reflexively as the muscles around his ribs spasmed, refusing to expand and let in new oxygen. Shudders ran through his body as coughs turned to choking gags, and ocean water and bile dribbled out of his mouth.

“Where is the medical team?” Teyla cried out. She’d kept a tight grip on his hand and was rubbing his back with the other one, but the feeling was faint. He shook, biting back a whimper as he suddenly realized he was cold to the point of numbness.

“Here!” The distant shout echoed down the hallway.

“Come on, Eckels,” Bates ground out, sweat pouring from his face as he continued to pump on the young Marine’s chest.

More people crowded into the wide corridor, and voices erupted around the three bodies sprawled on the floor. The ground was still covered in a thin layer of ocean water, but no one seemed to notice as they stomped through it, kneeling in it and letting it soak into their pants. John closed his eyes, feeling a coughing paroxysm building in his lungs.

“How’s the major?” a young man asked, and suddenly another pair of hands was on John’s shoulder.

“He is breathing, but he has not moved or talked since… since…”

“No worries,” the man interrupted. “Major, are you with us?” He paused for a second, rummaging through a bag and didn’t seem to expect a reply of any kind. “Sergeant Bates said the water threw them pretty hard into this room when you got the door open?”

“Yes,” Teyla answered. “He was concerned about injuries to his neck.”

The man she was talking to leaned forward, and John caught a glimpse of tan skin and close cropped dark hair. He grinned down at John, revealing straight white teeth. “Hey there, Major. We’ll get you back to the infirmary in no time.”

Seconds later, he was strapping a stiff collar under John’s neck, then rolling him carefully onto his back. John moaned at the movement, then coughed.

“He has thrown up much water,” Teyla said.

“Alright,” the young man answered. He leaned forward. “I’m Sergeant Maldonado by the way.”

“Doc,” John whispered, and Maldonado’s face split into a wide smile.

“That’s right, sir. I’m putting you in a c-collar until we get you to the infirmary, just in case.”

“You are a doctor?” Teyla asked, cupping John’s limp hand with both of hers.

“No, ma’am. Corpsman. Doc’s just a nickname. Was he breathing when you got to him?”

Teyla’s hold on his hand tightened and she shook his head. “He was not,” she choked out. “He was so pale and still and cold. I thought he was dead.”

“I understand,” he responded gently. “How long did you perform rescue breathing?” Maldonado continued to check John over but glanced up at Teyla every few seconds as if he was checking on her health as well.

“I do not…” she started, then shook her head. “They were trapped in the flooding section for several minutes after we lost radio contact and the water filled their corridor.” She sucked in a ragged breath, drawing a hand over her face. “None of them were breathing by the time we were able to open the bulkhead door long enough for them to wash onto this side of the corridor. Sergeant Bates… breathed into the major’s mouth. I have never seen such a thing.”

“Okay,” Maldonado said. “He started throwing up water soon after that then?”

“Yes…no, not right away, but eventually… yes.” Teyla shook her head in confusion. “He is still so pale.”

The corpsman nodded, then slipped a mask over John’s mouth. Shouts behind him grew louder then dimmed as pounding feet ran away, and then Bates was back, kneeling next to Teyla. John blinked up at him, feeling like he needed to say something to the man. Teyla had just been talking about him, talking about something he’d done, something that John needed to respond to or acknowledge.

He coughed instead, his chest jerking in spasms as it worked to expel the ocean still clinging to his lungs and draw in oxygen at the same time. Maldonado and Bates moved around him, sliding him onto a backboard and then onto a gurney, whispering about CPR and breathing and drowning and death.

With a moan, John closed his eyes, letting the world rattle and slide past him as he concentrated on breathing through a film of water.

* * *

The infirmary was a mass of chaos and noise swarming around him and the two other people who’d been trapped in the flooding section of the corridor. _Eckels and Voros. Eckels and Voros._ The image of the sergeant and botanist walking beside him sprang to mind. They’d been laughing at something when the bulkhead door behind them had slammed shut. John had heard a cracking thud, and the sound had reverberated through the floor.

And then water had rushed in—ice cold ocean water that had soaked through his boots in a matter of seconds, then steadily crawled up his leg as their entire section flooded. Eckels had thrown himself at the steel door in a panic, not calming down until John had grabbed him and physically thrown him five feet. By then, the water had crept up to mid-thigh and he’d already lost all feeling in his toes.

“Major Sheppard?” A doctor leaned over him, peeling back his eyes and spearing them with a flashing light. He was still learning everyone’s name, still adjusting to having a leadership role on Atlantis, but he thought her name was Cole. Doctor Cole. Something Cole.

“Pupils are responsive. What’s his core temp?”

“88.6 degrees.”

“Get these clothes off him, carefully, and get him hooked up to a heart monitor. Teyla, I’m sorry, we’re going to need you to wait outside.”

John felt a hand tighten on his, then let go, and he moaned at the sudden loss of warmth.

“Let’s get a warm IV started, and I want to rule out any traumatic injuries as soon as possible.”

John blinked, seeing flashes of movement out of the corner of his eyes. He jerked in surprise when he felt air rush over the length of his body, then again when a heavy warm weight settled over him, up to his chest.

“Major, you’re in the infirmary. We’re going to run a scan so I need you to lie as still as possible,” Cole said, reappearing over his head.

He coughed in response, then gagged at water pooling in the back of his throat. Hands fluttered over him, rolling him up onto his side and then holding him in the precarious position. Liquid burned the back of his throat as he choked but little if any made it out of his mouth. He blinked, his vision blurry, and just made out the frantic motions of resuscitation two beds over.

“Looks like he’s done,” Cole said. “Onto his back, carefully. He’s dangerously cold.”

The infirmary shook, then shifted, and John’s vision blurred again until he was staring up at the ceiling. He heard Doctor Cole and a handful of nurses talking as a green band of light washed over his head and down his body, and then more contraptions were added to his body—pads stuck to his chest, a clip on his finger, an IV in his arm.

By the time he was moved away from the loudest shouts and wailing alarms of the infirmary, he had started shaking badly, his body on automatic as it struggled to warm him up. A nurse, whose name he did not know, removed the collar around his neck, and then Doctor Cole was back, replacing his oxygen mask with a tube under his nose.

“Major, I know you’re feeling miserable right now, but everything looks good. We’ll have you warmed up in no time. Do you remember what happened?”

He shivered, then coughed, and the nameless nurse held a straw to his lips, letting him sip a small mouthful of warm water before pulling it away too soon.

“Flooding,” he whispered. “Trapped.”

Cole smiled. “That’s right. Get some rest. Natalie,” she said, looking at the nurse, “let’s get another blanket for him, and I want vital checks every fifteen minutes until his temperature is back to normal.”

“Others?” John asked, raising his head. He held it up for all of two seconds before he collapsed back in exhaustion. He blinked as his vision swam, but he forced his attention back on Cole, waiting for his answer.

She hesitated a moment, then nodded, patting his arm. “Doctor Beckett and the rest of the staff are still with them now, but I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

He nodded, letting his eyes slide closed as the nurse—Natalie—spread another warm blanket over his shivering body. _Cole would be back soon,_ he thought, but when he tried to open his eyes again, they refused to move. Within moments, the sounds of the infirmary faded away and he sank into a deep sleep.

* * *

“Get us out!” Sergeant Eckels screamed, throwing himself into the door. The thud of his body against the metal was a muted thud, giving John the impression of a mosquito propelling itself against the windshield of a speeding car. “Open it!”

“Sergeant, calm down!” John ordered. When the other man threw himself against the bulkhead again, John sloshed through the water, wrapped his arms around the sergeant, and tossed him into the water. Eckels came up gasping, water pouring off his face.

“Doctor Voros, we need to override the locking mechanism on this door,” John said, shivering as the water level rose past his thighs to his waist. He ripped the control panel off the door, revealing the crystals.

“I’m a botonist!” Voros screamed back, his voice a high-pitched wail. He stood frozen against the wall, staring at John in panic.

“Sir, where is the water coming from?” Eckels asked, on his feet again and pushing against the closed door, but thankfully no longer throwing his body around.

“McKay, control tower, somebody!” John yelled into his radio. “One of those corridor doors dropped, trapping us in a flooding section of Atlantis. We need that door open now before we all drown.”

 _“Major? Where are you?”_ Doctor Weir’s voice rang loud in his ear and he flinched.

He clamped his jaw shut, forcing his chattering teeth to stop moving, and gave her his location. McKay was on the radio a minute later, but by that time, the water level had risen to his chest.

“I’ve got the control panel off and I see three crystal chips. What do I do?”

“We’re going to die,” Voros whimpered behind him.

“We are _not_ going to die,” Eckels snapped back, reverting to throwing his body against the solid wall again.

“McKay!”

 _“The door sealed automatically to prevent the city from flooding. You can’t open it from your side!”_

 _“Sir, this is Sergeant Bates. Teyla and I are making our way to your position now.”_

 _“Good! That’s good! Bates, there will be a control panel about ten feet from the door. You’ll have to rip it off, take out the middle crystal, move the bottom crystal up one, then bridge the top two with the third.”_

 _“What?”_ Bates screamed back, and John heard his voice shudder in time with his pounding footsteps.

“Run!” John yelled. The water was at his jaw and still rising fast. He heard Voros and Eckels splashing around him as they kicked off from the floor to keep their heads above water.

“I can’t swim!” Voros screamed.

“Eckels, grab onto him!”

 _“Major Sheppard!”_ Weir was yelling in his ear, but he had no time to respond.

He looked up at the rapidly approaching ceiling. “Take some deep breaths, get as much oxygen into your lungs as you can.”

He had time to breathe in deeply twice before the water filled their section of the hallway. John opened his eyes, searching out the two others with him. The lights were miraculously still working, but the far one was starting to flicker. He pushed away from the ceiling, grabbing onto the nearest arm.

Eckels. He turned the sergeant around and tried to make calming motions with his other hand, but the man’s eyes were opened wide. Voros was spinning around behind him, a stream of bubbles erupting from his mouth.

 _Dammit!_ John thought. _Come on, Bates!_

He swam back toward the door control panel and fiddled with the crystals, trying to remember what McKay had said. Take out the middle one, move the bottom one up, bridge the top two…

He did so, knowing McKay had also said it wouldn’t work from their side. When nothing happened, he banged his fist against the wall in frustration.

How long had they been holding their breaths? Thirty seconds? One minute? His chest was starting to ache, the water becoming a crushing presence around him. He replaced the crystals in the original order and turned back toward Voros and Eckels, trying to remember where Bates and Teyla had been exploring.

 _Breathe!_ his mind screamed. He grit his teeth, fighting the instinct. The rest of his body was growing numb from the cold, but the temperature was the least of his worries at the moment. He would die of asphyxia long before hypothermia.

John spotted Voros just as the man’s body jerked, spasming as he lost out against instinct and tried to breathe in the water. Eckels was up near the ceiling, the last place they’d had air. John swam toward the botanist and grabbed onto him, staring into a pale face and sightless eyes. He pushed him away, moving back toward the door again.

 _Fight it,_ he screamed at himself. _Don’t breathe!_ He’d closed his eyes after turning away from Voros, but he opened them now as he let out a small stream of bubbles. His ribs were caving into his chest cavity, and he hung suspended, losing all sense of up and down.

He was staring at a pair of unmoving legs near his head when instinct finally won out. He exhaled with a panicked burst, then sucked in a mouthful of water immediately. Icy razor blades scraped down the back of his throat as his chest jerked, trying to expel the water he’d inhaled but only breathing more of it. The lights of the corridor flickered, and he felt his thrashing limbs slow down as his world grew dark.

“No!” He flew up out of the bed, grabbing at his throat. Alarms were wailing around him, and he coughed to the point of gagging as he gasped in air.

“Major!” Teyla called out, grabbing onto his arm.

He felt his body slump forward in exhaustion as the nightmarish images of drowning faded from his mind. Teyla wrapped an arm around him and eased him back, then pulled the covers back up to his shoulders. He was panting, but he forced himself to slow down, to take back control.

He was alive. Breathing.

“Wha…” he started, then licked dry lips with a frown. “What... going on?”

Alarms were still blaring through the infirmary, and shouting voices had joined the commotion. Teyla stood next to him, one hand gripping his arm, but her attention was directed toward the other side of the infirmary.

“Sergeant Eckels began to shake violently,” she said. “I heard one of the doctors say he was having a seizure.”

The pitching siren cut off abruptly, but that only made the shouts of medical personnel seem louder. John pushed himself up on shaking arms, watching the turmoil, and he realized he’d fallen asleep before getting his answer from Cole. He didn’t know how the other two were doing.

“Teyla,” he gasped out, intending to ask her, but as she turned toward him, his arms gave out, and he fell back to the bed. He coughed, hearing wheezing breaths in between each crackling bark.

Despite the noise around Eckels, someone heard John, and a nurse ran over. She moved quickly, using the bed controls to raise him up and then giving him small sips of water until John got his coughing under control.

“Doctor Cole will be over in a minute,” she said.

He nodded, not daring to speak yet. Teyla grabbed the glass after she was gone and held it out for John as he took another sip.

“Thanks,” he whispered a moment later, settling back down. The bed was still raised at an angle, and he found it a little easier to breathe. “How are the others?”

She shook her head, her jaw clenched tight, and he realized how pale she was. Her hand was gripping the bed rail next to him, and her knuckles had blanched white as she stared off into the distance.

“Hey,” he said, brushing her hand with his fingers. “You okay?”

She took in a shuddering breath and finally faced him. “The knowledge of your people, what you are able to accomplish. It is… wondrous. Beyond anything I have ever imagined.”

He frowned, studying her. She looked and sounded more haunted than anything else, and certainly not in awe of their technology or their knowledge. She swallowed, glancing back at the small group still huddled around Sergeant Eckels’ bed. John opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, at a loss of how to respond. He rubbed a hand against his chest, feeling an aching pressure every time he breathed in.

“When Sergeant Bates opened the doors and you washed in…” She stopped and dropped her head, taking a deep breath before looking at him again. “You were not breathing. You were… dead.”  
John heard his own wheezing breaths over the soft hiss of oxygen flowing through the nasal cannula, felt the pinch of the pulse-ox clip on his finger and the tug of the heart rate monitor pads on his chest. A headache pounded behind his eyes, bruises ached all over his body, and his stomach was beginning to cramp.

“Definitely not dead,” he rasped.

“No, you are not.” She grabbed his fingers, and her expression lifted a little. “I have never seen someone breathe into one who was not, to revive them in such a manner… It was truly remarkable.”

John grimaced at the thought. Bates had done the rescue breathing. _Bates._ Of all the people to slap their mouths over his…

He squirmed, burrowing into the bed and extracting his hand from Teyla’s hold in the process. Doctor Cole approached at that moment, saving him from having to respond to Teyla and from thinking about anything to do with Bates.

“Major Sheppard, good to see you awake. How are you feeling?”

“Like crap,” he choked out.

Cole smiled. “You’ll probably feel like that for a few more days.” She pressed a stethoscope to his chest, moving it around slowly as he breathed, before pulling it back and studying the monitor screen next to his bed. “You’re a little congested, but that’s not surprising. Everything else looks good. I’d like to keep you on oxygen for a little bit longer, but it’s safe to say you’re out of the woods.”

“Out of the…woods?” Teyla asked.

“I’ll recover,” John explained. He hadn’t thought he wouldn’t recover, but it was nice to hear the words anyway, especially given how much his head was pounding, and that nausea had joined its friend, pissed-off stomach.

“How are the others?” he asked, trying to distract himself from his body’s rebellion.

Cole sighed, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. We were unable to revive Doctor Voros, and Sergeant Eckels…” She trailed off, looking over at the Marine’s bed. The furor had calmed, leaving only one person hovering nearby. “It took a while to resuscitate him, and he’s suffered some complications since.”

“Will he recover?” Teyla asked.

“It’s too early to tell at this point.”

The doctor lapsed into silence, and John flashed back to the memory of Eckels throwing himself against the door and Voros screaming in panic. He’d watched them die, saw the air stream out of their mouths underwater, watched their bodies buck as they involuntarily breathed in the ocean. He groaned, hunching forward as his stomach curled in on itself.

“Major? What’s wrong?” Cole was leaning forward, trying to get a look at him.

“He is very pale,” Teyla said, her hand on his shoulder.

John leaned back, gasping against the nausea. “Sick,” he groaned. He wrapped his arms around his torso and closed his eyes.

“Teyla, will you go grab Natalie? She should be at the nurses’ station.”

“Of course.”

John heard the slight tap of her shoes against the floor, and an arm dug behind his back and sat him up, holding a bowl under his chin. He grabbed it in desperation, feeling his mouth fill with saliva a second before he lost the battle against his stomach.

* * *

The next day passed in a haze as John suffered what he could only describe as the worst case of food poisoning he had ever experienced. Except there had been no food. Just an ocean containing who knew what kinds of germs and bacteria, and he had swallowed way too much of it.

On top of the water wreaking havoc on his digestive system, he continued to cough and hack, his lungs burning with every breath. Cole had taken off the nasal cannula but he was still wheezing, and now a chilly ache had taken root in his joints, signaling the approach of a bad cold or flu.

He was lying in his infirmary bed, sprawled under a thin sheet and finally believing he was done with the frantic rushes to the bathroom, when he heard someone clear their throat just out of sight behind the curtain around his bed.

“What?” he croaked, draping an arm over his forehead. His head was still pounding, impervious to the painkillers Cole had given him for it.

“Sir,” Sergeant Bates said, stepping a foot into the curtained off space and stopping. He was not quite standing at attention, but his body was stiff, his posture radiating unease.

John dropped his arm and sat up a little straighter in his bed, regarding the man in front of him. They hadn’t exactly gotten off on the right foot—Bates had been squarely behind Sumner and Sumner had made no bones about his feelings regarding John’s presence on this expedition—but they were both soldiers at heart, trained to do the best with whatever the situation gave them, and this situation had given John command of Atlantis.

“I need to thank you,” he said. His mind conjured an image of the sergeant giving him mouth-to-mouth, but he squashed the thought quickly.

Bates glanced at him, then away, still looking rigid and uncomfortable. “Yes, sir,” he said.

John stared at him. He’d thought the sergeant was finally coming around to him, but now he wasn’t so sure. Bates’ face was an expressionless mask, and his eyes held that 1,000-yard stare.

“Sergeant, you did good. If you hadn’t gotten to us when you did…” Bates’ face twisted, guilt etching deep lines around his mouth and eyes, and John’s voice trailed off as he realized the awkwardness and unease was not directed at him at all. “Sergeant?”

Bates took in a shuddering breath and looked away.

“Bates? What’s going on?”

“Doctor Voros is dead. I just heard Doctor Beckett say Sergeant Eckels suffered permanent brain damage. If… _when_ we make contact with Earth again and find a way to get back there, he’ll be discharged from the military.”

A pain twisted through John’s chest as he thought of the two men he’d been walking and chatting with just the day before. “Bates, that’s not your fault—”

“It is my fault,” he barked, then added, “Sir.” John shook his head but the sergeant took another step toward him. “It was just Teyla and I there, and none of you were breathing.”

“You made a choice,” John said slowly, fighting back a surge of guilt of his own. He hadn’t thought about what had happened from Bates’ point of view. He sucked in a ragged breath, hearing the air wheeze past his lips. One man faced with three dying people, all desperate for help.

“And Voros is dead because of it, and Eckels… Eckels will never be the same again.”

John leaned back on his pillow, his mind racing as he tried to think of what to say to the man. He was alive because Bates had chosen to help him first, but he could have easily been the one with brain damage from hypoxia, or dead. He shivered and tugged the sheet up to his chest.

“You did the best you could, Sergeant, and you saved my life in the process. It was a tough situation to begin with, but you are not responsible for those things that are beyond your abilities.”

Bates’ shoulders slumped and he nodded. He didn’t look any less guilty, but he was a career Marine, and John knew this was not the first time he’d faced a no-win situation and it wouldn’t be the last. He’d work through the guilt. In the future, John knew he’d be ready to make the necessary decisions no matter how difficult.

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered. He looked over at John and nodded. “Get well soon, sir.”

John waved a hand at him, mumbling a thanks. He closed his eyes when Bates left and concentrated on breathing. He was alive because Bates had chosen him. Survivor’s guilt—he knew the feeling. Knew what it would do to him over the next few weeks, maybe even months, but he too would work through it.

“Hello?” a quiet voice called out.

John opened his eyes and smiled. “Hey, Teyla.”

“I saw Sergeant Bates leaving but I wasn’t sure if you were resting…”

“No, it’s fine,” he said, sitting up again. He was damned exhausted but Teyla had looked like a wreck the last time he’d seen her, and he realized she too had been faced with the same overwhelming situation as Bates.

“I did not mean to overhear your conversation with Sergeant Bates,” she started.

John shook his head, waving a hand at her to brush it off. “S’okay,” he said. He coughed, clearing his throat and rubbing a hand against the steady pressure of congestion in his lungs.  
Teyla stepped forward and poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table next to his bed. He took the glass, ignoring how it shook slightly in his hand. The fatigue from the last day was beginning to swamp over him. He managed two sips before he passed it back to her and sank into his pillows.

“I understand Sergeant Bates’ feelings,” Teyla said after she’d set the glass down. “I have rarely felt so…helpless.”

John swallowed, fighting the urge to squirm uncomfortably in the bed. Teyla had no problems talking about what she was feeling, and John was not used to it. He loved that about her—loved that he never had any doubts about where she stood or what she was thinking—but he would be the first to admit that his own social skills were not nearly so developed.

He flashed to the moment behind the bulkhead door when he’d taken his last breath of air, when he’d seen Voros’ death throes, when the ocean had crushed in on him. Helpless. He could relate to that. He’d hung suspended in the cold water, fighting the urge to breathe but at the same time knowing he was just fighting off the inevitable until he caved and breathed in the deadly water.

He shivered at the memory. Teyla stepped away from him, reappearing a second later with a blanket. “Are you cold?”

John nodded, then watched her as she unfolded the cover and spread it over him.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

She smiled. “I am sorry to hear about your people, but I am glad you are recovering.” She took his hand in both of hers. “I feel we still have much to learn from each other.”

“Like that stick fighting,” John said, squeezing her hand.

“Yes, like bantos fighting. I have also talked to your doctors here about learning first aid and rescue breathing. If I am faced with a situation such as this again, I do not want to be forced to stand on the sidelines knowing there is something I can do to help.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” John said.

“Rest, Major, and feel better soon.” Teyla patted his hand and stepped back, disappearing around the curtain.

John relaxed, letting his eyes slide closed as he mulled over Teyla’s resolve to learn from this situation. There was stuff he could learn too—stuff everyone in the city could learn. Should learn. They were surrounded by a wealth of Ancient technology, and the more they understood how it worked, the less helpless they would be in the future if, God forbid, anyone ever ended up trapped somewhere in the city again.

He should talk to Weir and McKay, maybe Beckett as well—get all of their input on setting up a training regiment for his people. And the scientists should learn self-defense and the basics of weaponry. They all needed to be prepared for anything this galaxy threw at them.

“Good idea, good idea,” he mumbled, filing away the thought. He sighed, satisfied, and snuggled down under the blanket as he finally gave in to the sleep his body was craving. He needed to rest now as much as he could, because starting first thing tomorrow, he had a lot of work to tackle.

END


End file.
